The German organist and composer, Georg Friedrich Kauffmann, received his early keyboard training from J.H. Buttstett in Erfurt and continued under Johann Friedrich Alberti in Merseburg, with whom he also studied composition. When Alberti suffered a stroke in 1698 which caused paralysis in his right hand, Kauffmann deputized for him, and in 1710 succeeded his teacher as organist at the court of Duke Christian I of Saxony and at Merseburg Cathedral. Kauffmann subsequently became court organist for the Duke of Saxe-Merseburg and was later promoted to court Kapellmeister.

Kauffmann’s music and reputation spread beyond Merseburg within a few years of his appointment in 1710. Bach’s friend Johann Gottfried Walther, who may have known Kauffmann in Erfurt, copied his chorale-prelude on Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir early in the second decade of the century, and Walther’s pupil Johann Tobias Krebs copied Kauffmann’s G major Fantasia at roughly the same time. (Two later manuscripts written by Walther, D-Bsb Mus.2254/1–4 and NL-DHgm 4.G.14, contain further copies of Kauffmann’s organ works.) In Leipzig, the university considered asking Kauffmann to inspect the newly finished organ of the Paulinerkirche in 1717, but the invitation eventually went to Bach; five years later, two scribes who worked for Johann Kuhnau – one of them his nephew J.A. Kuhnau, who later worked for Bach – copied parts to Kauffmann’s solo cantata Unverzagt, beklemmtes Herz, probably for a performance on August 16, 1722, shortly after Kuhnau’s death. Kauffmann may have owed his Leipzig contacts to J.P. Kunzen, the librettist of his oratorio Die Himmelfahrt Christi. In Halle, the organist Gottfried Kirchhoff owned cantatas by Kauffmann, which he presumably used for performance in the Marienkirche; none of these copies, however, still exists.

In autumn 1722 Kauffmann went to Leipzig to compete for Kuhnau’s former position of Kantor at the Thomaskirche. The minutes of the Leipzig town council for November 22, 1722 list Kauffmann, described as ‘court organist and music director in Merseburg’, as one of seven contestants. According to the Hollsteinischer Correspondent (Hamburg) of 8 December, he performed his test piece on November 29, the first Sunday of Advent. The council minutes of December 21 report that Kauffmann ‘requested again that he be admitted to examination’. The council acceded to the request since J.S.Bach and Graupner were allowed two cantata performances each. He remained among the finalists for the job until Bach ultimately received it in April 1723. Bach and Kauffmann may have had at least indirect contacts during the following years. In or about 1727, when Bach’s son Wilhelm Friedemann was studying in Merseburg with J.G. Graun, J.A. Kuhnau copied the scores of two Kauffmann cantatas, Komm, du freudenvoller Geist and Nicht uns, Herr; he copied a third, Die Liebe Gottes ist ausgegossen, at an uncertain later date. The pieces most probably served for performance at the Neue Kirche in Leipzig.

In 1725 Johann Mattheson’s Critica musica carried an announcement for a treatise by Kauffmann, who referred to himself in the prospectus as ‘director of church music to the Duke of Saxe-Merseburg’. The treatise – completed in manuscript but never printed, and since lost – bore the title Introduzzione alla musica antica et moderna, das ist: Eine ausführliche Einleitung zur alten und neuen Wissenschaft der edlen Music; the contents, given in summary, included ‘the general and special rules of composition in the old and new style’, a formulation that suggests Kauffmann followed the tradition of ‘figural’ contrapuntal reduction established by Christoph Bernhard.

Eight years later Kauffmann began the serial publication of his Harmonische Seelenlust, the first collection of chorale preludes for organ to appear in print since Scheidt’s Tabulatura nova of 1624. The title-page identifies the composer as ‘chapel director and court organist to the Duke of Saxe-Merseburg’ – somewhat confusingly, since according to other sources, J.T. Römhild had become ducal Kapellmeister in 1731. Kauffmann most probably planned the Harmonische Seelenlust as a complete edition of his organ chorales and it was published on a subscription basis. He died of consumption before the entire collection appeared, but his widow saw the remaining instalments through the press; this may account for the inclusion of three pieces by Walther (two settings of Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten and one of Wir Christenleut) and one by Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow (Nun lasst uns Gott, dem Herren), among the later numbers. The publication met with little initial success – in a letter of August 4, 1736, Walther reported a complaint from one of the publishers to the effect that ‘buyers are getting scarcer all the time, and if it continues like this, he will have to give it up’ – but it soon established itself as one of the most significant achievements of German organ music and remained in high esteem into the 19th century. Its 98 chorale preludes, described by the composer as ‘short, but elaborated with particular invention and pleasing style’, embrace virtually every type current in the early 18th century, including duets (‘in which there is always figural activity [etwas Obligates], which restores what the absence of other voices takes away’), fughettas on the first line of the chorale, and a variety of cantus firmus settings, six of which have the melody ‘played à part on the oboe’ and are the earliest examples of the type. Kauffmann furnished unusually careful performance directions, often providing copious ornaments, tempo markings, and detailed suggestions for registration. The music reveals a vivid motivic imagination and a flair for affective dissonances and harmonic progressions.

Kauffmann’s vocal works, with their concise phrase structure and avoidance of polyphonic complexity, adhere to the stylistic norms of German sacred music in his generation. All use librettos of the post-Neumeister type, consisting almost exclusively of recitatives and arias; scriptural texts and chorales appear only in the outer movements of Nicht uns, Herr and Die Liebe Gottes ist ausgegossen. The opening choruses of these cantatas – one fugal, the other freely concerted – have considerable breadth and rhythmic vigour. In the Ascension Oratorio, Kauffmann aids the dramatic flow by avoiding text repetition and demonstrates his fine instrumental style in the symphonia – a French overture in the style of Georg Frideric Handel. Kauffmann’s recitatives achieve notable fluency of declamation; his arias, all set as strict da capos, have attractive thematic material and maintain well-balancedproportions between sections.

The inventiveness and solid craftsmanship of Kauffmann’s music bear out Walther’s opinion that it ‘cannot but be considered estimable by people of judgment’. Despite the small extent of his surviving output, Kauffmann ranks among the very best of J.S. Bach’s German contemporaries.